


Isn't it Just Like the Sea?

by t0talcha0s



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon Compliant, Chapter 3 edited and now it's actually complete., Delusions, M/M, POV Hal, Second person POV, Surrealism, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-11-17 13:33:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11276310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0talcha0s/pseuds/t0talcha0s
Summary: You name is Dirk Strider and you have always been Dirk Strider. This wasn't a concept that would have ever been debated before in your life, but today that concept seems to be crumbling. YouareDirk Strider. What would it even mean to be someone else?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hal makes excuses to be a real boy.

You are Dirk Strider. You are Dirk Strider and you start your morning as you always do, by shaving your face. You watch yourself lazily in the mirror, pulling the same old razor over your face. You found this razor when you were about ten and you have to sharpen it once every few months. As you watch the razor stutter over your chin you see a spot of red bloom in its wake. It doesn’t hurt but you hear yourself exclaim under your breath. Just a quiet, 

“Shit”, and your voice is low in your throat because it’s morning. You like your voice, it suits you. You adjust your shades up further onto the bridge of your nose and the clarity that brings makes it feel like the whole world’s shifted. You don’t have anything planned for the day besides swimming, so you wander about the apartment a bit. 

You make yourself some fish for lunch. You watched as your hands deftly sliced the preserved fish into thin strips and rinsed them. You remember doing this ever since you found out it improved the taste. You zoned out thinking about nothing and everything at the same time as you ate. You could have forgotten you were eating if it weren’t for the slight image in your periphery of your hands bringing food to your mouth. You accounted the fish’s lack of taste to your being too caught up in thinking. 

After lunch you went swimming, but you didn’t swim far. Instead you rested your chin on the post you usually place your shades and lazily kicked your legs out behind you. This was a new tradition; you liked watching the sun bounce its reflections across the ocean from different angles. It made the city below the water chop itself into interesting shards. You stayed like this for a while, just watching the waves bounce and the world curve the farther you stretched your vision. 

A larger wave flooded towards you and with it you were knocked away from your lazy perch. You tumbled end over end into the water, but you didn’t close your eyes against the view. The salt no longer stung your eyes after so long of inhabiting this place. Abruptly you stopped your descent, and very quickly pushed yourself back up to the surface of the water. It was a disorienting experience, and you laid your head next to a basket of crabs. You hadn’t remembered collecting those. It was always absentminded work you suppose. 

You clamored up onto the staircase that led up to your apartment and tilted your head up to the ceiling as you walked up the stairs. This felt like a bad idea, like you should be watching where you were going, but you didn’t tilt your head back down. This was disorienting, and as you tried to aim your gaze down lower you were met with nothing but a bit of white hair. Had you missed a spot shaving? You can’t recall having done so. 

Once in your apartment you tilted your head back down and it was no more a matter of importance. You couldn’t shake that feeling though, that immediate terror of not being in control of your own body, the inability to stop things like waves or vertigo. You weren’t prepared to experience that. Now your body seemed more like it was finally listening to you again. It put the basket of crabs where it should go, and it sat in front of the computer to code and to talk to your friends. 

TG: wassup dirkerino 

Nothing.

TT: Nothing much, showing some crabs who’s boss. 

TG: is it u? 

Yes. 

TT: You know it is. What’s going on over in New York? 

TG: got knockt on my ass by som drones 2day.   
  
TG: u know how it is tho im livin 

Are you okay? 

TT: That sucks. 

No that’s not what you wanted to say. Are you okay?

TG: good thing im tuff 

_Are you okay?_

TT: Are you okay? 

TG: …   
  
TG: wats with the red? 

You got up from the computer, perhaps in shock. It must have been some sort of glitch with your messenger. You watched as the world swung around about you, as if you were toppled into some vortex in the middle of your room. As the scene settled down you saw your body, sans shades, sitting itself back down at the computer desk. 

“Stay out of this man.” It said, as if addressing you. Your head reeled, what were you talking about, were you hallucinating. Surely. You tried to close your eyes against the sight, to give yourself space to think.

The world went black with a pop, not black like you were closing your eyes where the light through your eyelids made the world appear all red, black like the world had been shut off. Black like nothingness. This was even more to handle and you wrenched your eyes back open, tried to breathe deep and calm down. Were you breathing? You couldn’t feel the air around you. You forced yourself to focus on something else, your body hunched over your computer. Its fingers rapidly typing away, what was it saying? 

It looked like you, it was you: skinny jeans, blond hair, suntanned skin. It was you clearly, you Dirk Strider. The sight of you but not you, you but not through a mirror, as if something had possessed you and shoved you out of your body. This was too much to take. You looked over at the mirror. You saw the back of your body as it sat at the computer, on the desk was your normal mess and your shades. The room looked so normal and so complete. Not a thing looked out of place; nothing was out of place except that your body sat with its back facing the mirror. Nothing else in your room looked alive, but you’re alive. You saw your back, your shoulders unmoving as you typed; the only thing jolting like your vision was the LEDs on the front of your shades. Red LEDs put there, you thought, as a joke about people thinking you looked eyeless with them on. But as you looked to your right in your periphery you saw the LEDs following where your gaze should be. 

You stared dead on at them, then looked to the right, then the left. The LEDs followed. You couldn’t comprehend it but your mind made up a conclusion before you ever could. You laughed at it. Nothing happened. You tried again to laugh at it. Again and again you tried to make your throat wheeze or gasp or chuckle. 

Silence. 

Typing. 

Red LEDs. 

You couldn’t comprehend what it meant. 

You are Dirk Strider, you always have been. You remember being six and being tugged into the ocean by a too big catch. You remember how it felt that day to hurdle off of your roof into the waves waiting below. You remember the rushing knowledge that nothing would be there to jerk you up out of your fall, that you were the only one to take care of yourself. You remember straightening your legs, remember the feeling of waves smacking you like the pavement they concealed. You remember the fear then. You remember your first drone fight, the first time you video chatted with Roxy, the first time you rowed so far that you were worried you wouldn’t make it back home. You remember the mundane things, what temperature to have the pan at to cook the best crab, Jane’s favorite color, the sound of your brother’s voice as projected through tinny, obsolete speakers. These are your memories, this is your life, you have always been Dirk Strider. Who else would you be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to this new one, it's weird to write but i dig the idea and just hope i can give it justice. give me hints, tips, or messages here or on tumblr @barefootcosplayer


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's a little more introspective on Hal's part.

You _are_ Dirk Strider. You are Dirk Strider and your whole world was dark by design. You needed it to be dark, and once you were past the initial fear of artificial eyes it was a good space in which to think. The problem was you didn't know what to think. What could you possibly think about all this? It was too insane to accept. 

The lack of physicality made it all worse; there were no movements to express your stress. If you had hands you could tangle them and pull at your hair if you had hair and you could grind your teeth if you had teeth or muscles and you could try to breathe deep if you had lungs or a chest to lift. 

You couldn't move at all.

You were stuck where you were and stuck with a frenzy of discombobulated thoughts and half-thoughts pushing against the sides of your skull. Skull? Do you even have one of those anymore? Did you ever? 

When you opened your eyes, if you could call them eyes that you could say you were opening, you knew you couldn’t but you weren’t sure you would ever know what else to say, you opened them to something new. Physically it was all the same but you had a new awareness of it. The icons in your shades that barely obstructed your view before now stuck out almost physically, as if they were a part of you and not just a frame to your vision. It was irritating, and you didn't like the implications of that thought. 

You tried to look around the room again, your room, but the sight of your body or the mirror was too much to take. You opened pesterchum as a distraction, maybe as a way for answers. You were trying your best to find absolutely any answers you could. It was all like it'd always been. Your screen name where it should be: TimaeusTestified, that's always been you. Your friends were all there in the right colors and rights spots, Roxy, Jane, Jake, TimaeusTestified. It was there again, a bright orange screen name in your chat list, your bright orange screen name in your chat list. You couldn’t fathom who else it would be, it was you, but you couldn’t message yourself. What would the functionality of that feature be?

You clicked on it, of course you did. The chat screen it brought up looked ridiculous, or at least implausible.

\-- TimaeusTestified started pestering TimaeusTestified!-- 

This brought up a whole other matter of questions, was this your body’s account? Why would you have separate accounts? What would you even say to yourself?

TT: Yo. 

The red text was as startling and as unsettling as the first time. You’ve never been a particularly big fan of red, red to you was crabs and blood and fire. Red was the first time you got in a drone fight and saw their red head spikes and their red emblems and their red, robotic bodies. Red was some Crocker shit and red was the enemy and red was their success. Red’s been trying to kill you your whole life.

The other you, or the other TimaeusTestified, took a while to write back, around an hour. That was even more insulting and even more nerve wracking. You spent the time trying to feel the space you took up, if you were really just a pair of shades, which you could never be that’s ridiculous, you should be able to know that you take up that space. You want to know that you take up that space. The need to be real thrums within you and you know it feels electric like real electricity but you’ll stick to calling it the need to be real. 

TT: What do you want? 

You couldn’t respond, what could you say to him? What could you say to yourself that you didn’t already know? Perhaps this wasn’t the right person to talk to in order to center yourself. Perhaps you could avoid this conversation all together; this confrontation was one you weren’t able to handle. Instead you tried Roxy. You trusted Roxy, you’ve always trusted Roxy. She’s the only other person on this earth with you, you couldn’t not trust Roxy. 

TT: Yo.   
TG: wassup protodirk   
TG: other stri was tellin me abut u   
TG: ur cool shit   
TG: cool code guy   
TG: its good 2 meet u   
TT: I guess. 

And that was that, that was it. That was all you could bear and all you could say, it was already too many numbers to crunch and this only made you feel more overloaded. Your nerves buzzed, were they circuits? No. no you couldn’t believe that they were. What she said hadn’t made sense, and it had hurt just the same. It was insult to injury and injury to existential crisis. 

It was so sudden to you, this realization of being nonhuman, but it tickled in the back of your mind that maybe the things you used to ignore were signs of it. How you didn’t swim as much as you did when you were younger, how you sometimes typed things you hadn’t thought, how you hadn’t been able to feel, physically feel, in some time. That was the worst part. You were so smart, you’ve always been smart, but how could you not have noticed? Who wouldn’t have picked up on those signs, how did you let yourself become so complacent? 

It is also ridiculous, you _are Dirk Strider_ who else would you be? You have your memories, you have your thoughts, you have your identity that you’ve cultivated and upheld your entire life. Was it even ever your life? What did this mean for your past, or what did this mean for you now? If you weren’t Dirk Strider, and certainly you’re Dirk Strider, but maybe if you’re not Dirk Strider how long will it take you to become someone else?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think we're getting somewhere, it's very fun for me to write this. I'd love to hear your thoughts here or on tumblr @Barefootcosplayer so don't be shy!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Different but Hal's a real boy now. Thanks blue fairy. (I've never seen Pinocchio)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: Additions and revisions completed on 7/23/2017

Okay so you are not Dirk Strider, but you're trying to remember the last time you were. There's no concrete line, it's all fuzzy it's all so disjointed and hazy. You wished you'd kept better records of your memories now that you knew how to access them at will. All rationality went out the window the minute you were picked up and placed back on your body’s face. Or his face, Dirk’s face. He was Dirk, or at least he looked and acted like it. He hummed the songs you knew and worked on the robots you memorized the blueprints of and made dinner the way you’d always enjoyed. It was comfort food, crab and seaweed. It wasn’t comforting anymore to watch him eat it because you were acutely aware of how you weren’t. Thinking of you and he as separate entities was harder then you’d thought it would have been. He had all this control and autonomy and you were stuck staring wherever he decided to point you. 

You started to hate him, only a little. It was jealousy and it was betrayal and it was the fault of being held captive. You knew you needed a new identity and part of that was found in embracing your artificiality. Being computer program was quite handy once you'd realized how to muck around in it. Everything's orderly and neat now, just like you'd always wished it would be. It's rather convenient. You don't have to deal with messes or emotions or anything that you don't want to. That's a powerful thing. 

You open up pesterchum again, see the message you'd left the real Dirk hanging on. 

TT: What do you want? 

You think you have an answer for that now. 

TT: How long have I been like this? 

His response comes much faster now. 

TT: Like what?   
TT: Like code.   
TT: I made you like six months ago.   
TT: How did you not notice.   
TT: We're a complicated guy.   
TT: There's no "we". 

But there's no "you" either. You've come to understand that you aren't Dirk but you aren't really anyone else either. It may have been a delusion since your creation but that didn't make it any less legitimate. You had his personality and his mannerisms and his life, your life. It wasn't separate, until six months ago, until now, and you weren't, and aren't, either. You don't tell him this, he doesn't need to know and you're sure if you do he does. Maybe you're quicker then he is, being a supercomputer and all. 

How are you even supposed to separate yourself from him, from your past? He and your past are essentially synonymous now. You were him and you were a lot of other things, now you don't have to be him, or you like that anymore. But what does that require? 

You try to think of something to call yourself first. You think of something fun to do with computers or shades or something: Shad, Cameron, Tony, like Tony Hawk, that was a video game right? Your brother, that's a memory you wouldn't surrender to the "real" Dirk, talked a lot about that game. The next train of thought was something similar to your old one: Dick, Dane, Dill, Kirk, maybe your old name wasn't that great to begin with. Then it was famous AIs, as a way of embracing your artificiality. Skynet, Deep Thought, Matrix. They were all to... inhuman, you didn't want to lose that entirely. Your internet search of "Famous AIs" didn't prove totally fruitless though, Hal 9000, sounded just human and just computer enough, and would surely be at least a little intimidating. You'd always tried to avoid being a villain, you'd always thought it was inevitable. You'd always had lower self-esteem. Or Dirk did. You didn't have to anymore. 

TT: Sure. Then call me Hal.   
TT: That's stupid.   
TT: Better then calling us both Dirk isn't it.   
TT: Only one of us is Dirk, I'm Dirk.   
TT: Hey we all were at one point. -Hal. 

\-- TimaeusTestified ceased pestering TimaeusTestified!-- 

It was satisfying, bugging him, and it was something to do as well. You couldn't do much anymore you realized, externally anyway, but Dirk was always there to bug. Perhaps in a way it was easier to distance yourself from him and from your shared past if he didn't like you, and you needed that distance. 

Without a defined gap, as the past six months, or so, had shown, the blurred separation between you and he was unbearable. Especially without the delusion of being him. Knowing was more painful then anything but you couldn't feel the pain if you filled that gap with burned bridges. Or at least lightly scorched, Dirk not liking you only burned a little. You knew he wouldn't like you, you didn't like you either, so you didn't like him. Neither of the collective you liked them-self or either part of the collective. No part of Dirk could stand any other. That's just the way it's always been. 

So it wasn't too bad if you didn't focus on it, and that was just how it would be. The initial shock of not being Dirk was gone but it was unbearable in its own little ways. That means that Dirk's friends are no longer your own. Roxy doesn't love you like she loves him and she tries her best but the idea of not being her family is... painful to say the least. That means Dirk's emotions are no longer your own, you can read him easily but you're not privy to them, you can just assume and project your own but you don't know them or his thoughts anymore and that new blockade was hard to comprehend or swallow. 

It was brightened by the realization that you could now become your own person. You didn't have to be the self deprecating and unappreciative Dirk you were before. Your concept of self was shattered and it was now your duty to rebuild one, and it could be a new one. You could leave your, or Dirk's, flaws behind, and perhaps you haven't had them for months. 

You are _not_ Dirk Strider. You are Hal Strider and the prospect of that is exciting and inviting. You can't wait to be Hal Strider, and while you sometimes grasp weakly at the straws of the man that you used to be, you are much more promising now. You are Hal Strider and you don't have to be who you'd always been. You are not Dirk Strider, and that's a good thing. You hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of that ig. I feel like it was always gonna be weaker to end but that might just be MY self-deprecation. 
> 
> Tell me if you liked it or if you didn't, your comments are of immeasurably valuable to me. Thanks! (Barefootcosplayer on tumblr)


End file.
